What happens if the counselors are not available?

I would hope that many of the teachers would be able to talk to their students about grieving and tragedies that befall us in life. I believe that’s all that the counselors do. They’re also there to help those who may be feeling more grief because they have lost a close friend.

Would you have felt better if a counselor had been available? It’s hard to know. It would depend on how affected you were by the deaths of those people in your school. If you were close to them, you may have grieved more and wanted more support. If you have a good support system in your family and friends, it may have been enought for you.

What an interesting question!

I think that, as in most things, not everyone needs a counselor. The counselors are available, not mandatory. Some people might need help. Others don’t. It might not have affected your life, but it might have affected the life of a classmate of yours.

I think those ‘counselors’ are incapable, for the most part – you didn’t miss much…saying ‘counselors are available’ are just a shtick, schools have to say that ‘cause they can’t say they’re not doing much about anything.

I agree with you as I too was not afforded grief counseling in school either. I would expect my parents would have handled that part of my emotional needs. I am not sure when this trend started but I do recall first hearing about grief counselors being made available in 1988 when Laurie Dann shot up that elementary school near my house.

“Those wounded, the other children in the school, and their parents, received extensive support to help them cope with the psychological after-effects of the attacks.”

I went to high school a long time ago. Any school with more than 1500 students was almost guaranteed to have a fatal accident.in 4 years. When the two kids got killed in the obligatory car accident, the school let us put photos in the glass case near the gym where the trophies were displayed. It stayed there for a month and was removed.
The general feeling was: “Oh well! I guess we should drive carefully.”
Now the message is: “Oh well, I guess we shouldn’t text while driving.”.

Hey @josie Psych majors need jobs too. ;-).

A counselor is unavailable??? Holy shit!! What will they do?? Talk to their parents?? Come to their own conclusions? Learn how to deal with grief or pain on their own without outside involvement? ;)

I think a kid could use some support if they experience a loss that’s difficult to cope with, and people have recognized it, so now counselors are available. For some kids, having a friend or classmate die is their first real experience of death.

~25 years ago, when I was 15, my cousin’s best friend of 9 years died at 17 after being crushed by a tractor-trailer that had been speeding, went out of control and toppled over the poor boy while he was on his moped. My cousin was heartbroken, and my aunt was not the person to turn to, while the pastor of the church we went to spouted off platitudes. I wish someone had really been there for my cousin then. I wasn’t anywhere near capable of helping him cope in the way he needed help.

@aprilsimnel What did the counselor tell your cousin? I’d really like to know.
Talk about your feelings? It is normal to feel loss? Think of something nice about the person and put it in your pocket? Five stages of grief?
Can understanding parent so the same job? .

@worriedguy, No, there was no counselor, that’s what I meant, and no one was willing or able to help my cousin through his grief. My aunt, his mother (who was my guardian) had BDP. She made the boy’s death about her, if you can believe it. He had no “understanding parent.”

So unless he saw a therapist as an adult, I don’t know how he incorporated that experience as he grew. I do know that at the time, he got more violent, argumentative and started really hanging with a bad crowd, where he’d just dabbled with them before. His friend had been a guy who worked hard and was on his way to university, even though he was raised in a very poor environment. My cousin looked up to him and was absolutely gutted when he died.